HB 171 
.G26 
1912 
Copy 1 



T The Crime of Poverty 



BY HENRY GEORGE 




Published by the Publicity Bureau of 

THE JOSEPH PELS FUND OF AMERICA 

Cincinnati, Ohio 



< 

u 

Pi 

3d 
< 

o 
o 

S3 

Ml 
Ut 

o 



H 

O 
H 



o 
o 

03 






M 



H 

CO 

Z 
to 



A 
(U 

to 
O 
»— > 



o 

Q 
W 

Q 

<: 






(0 

P 

< 
> 

P. 
h4 



O <i> 



^ § 









D 
O 

O 



bjC 



f4-S 









a 
o 
u 

0) o 

•^ s 

^-» o 

CXrH 



-HO 
<1 






O 

a 

O O 



^4 c S X 



w 






> 

o 
u 

u 
a 
a. 









rt o 



<^ ^* CO 'S 



Oco 



P 

o 

O 



C CL H -^ 

< 
O 
p4 



03 



.S an 

eo O 
o 



ft! 0) 



Pm 



O g g =« 



«t4 



o 

a> 

> 

o 
o 

u 

a 
cs 



aJ to 



5"^ 

^ d ,.« 



1 CO C ri . D 






rt 



rd 






n ■•-' ^ 



u 

Pi " 



C 

o 

>^ 

PQ 

I 

CO 

Pi 

< 
d 

CO 



w 



o 
<v 

O 



O 



pq 
I 



o f^ 
>^ o 

ffi CO 

t *^ 
>» ill 



o 



M CO Q . 

>^ CO ptj^ 

tij O tiiw 

H § H 



CO 

o 

a 




CO 

D 
O 

O 



^ CO 
(0 O 

^ u 
eo 

O '—' 
o .. 

^^ 

Si -a 

o 
tl 

a 



PQ 



H 
Pi 

O 

P^ 

o 



Pi 






i-t c3 

W o 

a.2 

-M 
Pi^ 

0) <^^ 



CO 

o 






Pi'? 



P^fe 
CO 5 



opq p^ 



i7 hJ rj 

o tz 



H I OPh 
WW 






w 



Kco 




e Crime of Poverty" 



The Crime of Poverty 



BY 



HENRY GEORGE 

w 



An address delivered in the Opera House, Burlington, 
Iowa, April 1, 1885, under the auspices of Bur- 
lington Assembly, No. 3135, Knights of 
Labor, which afterwards distributed 
fifty thousand copies in tract form 



Published by the Publicity Bureau of 

THE JOSEPH PELS FUND OF AMERICA 

Cincinnati, Ohio 



. G-2.C 



Gtii 



Es^, 



The Crime of Poverty 



Ladies and Gentlemen: I propose to talk to you 
to-night of the Crime of Poverty. I cannot, in a 
short time, hope to convince you of much ; but the 
thing of things I should like to show you is that pov- 
erty is a crime. I do not mean that it is a crime to be 
poor. Murder is a crime ; but it not a crime to be 
murdered ; and a man who is in poverty I look upon 
not as a criminal in himself so much as the victim of 
a crime for which others, as well, perhaps, as him- 
self, are responsible. That poverty is a curse, the 
bitterest of curses, we all know. Carlyle was right 
when he said that the hell of which Englishmen were 
most afraid was the hell of poverty ; and this is true, 
not of Englishmen alone, but of people all over the 
civilized world, no matter what their nationality. It 
is to escape this hell that we strive and strain and 
struggle; and work on oftentimes in blind habit long 
after the necessity for work is gone. 

The curse born of poverty is not confined to the 
poor alone ; it runs through all classes, even to the 
very rich. They, too, suffer; they must suffer; for 
there cannot be suffering in a community from which 
any class can totally escape. The vice, the crime, 



6 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

the ignorance, the meanness, born of poverty, poison, 
so to speak, the very air which rich and poor alike 
must breathe. 

I walked down one of your streets this morning, 
and I saw three men going along with their hands 
chained together. I knew for certain that those men 
were not rich men; and, although I do not know the 
offence for which they were carried in chains through 
your streets, this, I think, I can safely say, that, if you 
trace it up you will find it in some way to spring from 
poverty. Nine-tenths of human misery, I think you 
will find, if you look, to be due to poverty. If a man 
chooses to be poor, he commits no crime in being 
poor, provided his poverty hurts no one but himself. 
If a man has others dependent upon him ; if there are 
a wife and children whom it is his duty to support, 
then, if he voluntarily chooses poverty, it is a crime — 
ay, and I think that, in most cases, the men who have 
no one to support but themselves are men that are 
shirking their duty. A woman comes into the world 
for every man ; and for every man who lives a single 
life, caring only for himself, there is some woman 
who is deprived of her natural supporter. But while 
a man who chooses to be poor cannot be charged with 
crime, it is certainly a crime to force poverty on others. 
And it seems to me clear that the great majority of 
those who suffer from poverty are poor not from their 
own particular faults, but because of conditions im- 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 7 

posed by society at large. Therefore, I hold that 
poverty is a crime — not an individual crime, but a 
social crime ; a crime for which we all, poor as well as 
rich, are responsible. 

Two or three weeks ago I went one Sunday evening 
to the church of a famous Brooklyn preacher. Mr. 
Sankey was singing, and something like a revival was 
going on there. The clergyman told some anecdotes 
connected with the revival, and recounted some of the 
reasons why men failed to become Christians. One 
case he mentioned struck me. He said he had noticed 
on the outskirts of the congregation, night after night, 
a man who listened intently, and who gradually moved 
forward. One night, the clergyman said, he went to 
him saying, *'My brother, are you not ready to be- 
come a Christian ?" The man said, no he was not. 
He said it, not in a defiant tone, but in a sorrowful 
tone. The clergyman asked him why, whether he 
did not believe in the truths he had been hearing? 
Yes, he believed them all. Why, then, wouldn't he 
become a Christian? '*Well," he said, ''I can't join 
the church without giving up my business ; and it is 
necessary for the support of my wife and children. 
If I give that up, I don't know how in the world I can 
get along. I had a hard time before I found my pres- 
ent business, and I cannot afford to give it up. Yet, 
I can't become a Christian without giving it up." The 
clergyman asked, ''Are you a rum-seller?" No, he 



8 THE CRIME OF POVERTY * 

was not a rum-seller. Well, the clergyman said, he 
didn't know what in the world the man could be ; it 
seemed to him that a rum-seller was the only man 
who does a business that would prevent his becoming 
a Christian; and he finally said, "What is your 
business?" The man said, "I sell soap." ''Soap!" 
exclaimed the clergyman, ''you sell soap? How 
in the world does that prevent you becoming a 
Christian?" "Well," the man said, "it is this way; 
the soap I sell is one of these patent soaps that are 
extensively advertised as enabling you to clean clothes 
very quickly; as containing no deleterious compound 
whatever. Every cake of the soap I sell is wrapped 
in a paper on which is printed a statement that it con- 
tains no injurious chemicals, whereas the truth of the 
matter is that it does, and that though it will take the 
dirt out of the clothes pretty quickly, it will, in a little 
while, rot them completely out. I have to make my 
living in this way ; and I cannot feel that I can be- 
come a Christian if I sell that soap." The minister 
went on, describing how he labored unsuccessfully 
with that man, and finally wound up by saying, "He 
stuck to his soap, and lost his soul." 

But, if that man lost his soul, was it his fault alone? 
Whose fault is it that social conditions are such that 
men have to make that terrible choice between what 
conscience tells them is right, and the necessity of 
earning a living? I hold that it is the fault of society; 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 9 

that it is the fault of us all. Pestilence is a curse. The 
man who would bring cholera to this country, or the 
man who, having the power to prevent its coming here, 
would make no effort to do so, would be guilty of a 
crime. Poverty is worse than cholera ; poverty kills 
more people than pestilence, even in the best of 
times. Look at the death statistics of our cities; see 
where the deaths come quickest ; see where it is that 
little children die like flies — it is in the poorer quarters. 
And the man who looks with careless eyes upon the 
ravages of this pestilence; the man who does not set 
himself to stay and eradicate it, he, I say, is guilty of 
a crime. 

If poverty is appointed by the power which is above 
us all, then it is no crime; but if poverty is unneces- 
sary, then it is a crime for which society is responsible, 
and for which society must suffer. 

I hold, and I think no one who looks at the facts 
can fail to see, that poverty is utterly unnecessary. 
It is not by the decree of the Almighty, but it is be- 
cause of our own injustice, our own selfishness, our 
own ignorance, that this scourge, worse than any 
pestilence, ravages our civilization, bringing want and 
suffering and degradation, destroying souls as well as 
bodies. Look over the world, in this hey-day of 
nineteenth century civilization. In every civilized 
country under the sun you will find men and women 
whose condition is worse than that of the savage ; 



lo THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

men and women and little children with whom the 
veriest savage could not afford to exchange. Even in 
this new city of yours, with virgin soil around you, 
you have had this winter to institute a relief society. 
Your roads have been filled with tramps, fifteen, I am 
told, at one time taking shelter in a round-house here. 
As here, so everywhere ; and poverty is deepest where 
wealth most abounds. 

What more unnatural than this ? There is nothing 
in nature like this poverty which to-day curses us. 
We see rapine in nature ; we see one species destroy- 
ing another ; but as a general thing animals do not 
feed on their own kind ; and, wherever we see one 
kind enjoying plenty, all individuals of that kind 
share it. No man, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, 
of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. 
No man ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or 
three were swimming in grease, and the others all 
skin and bone. Nor in savage life is there anything 
like the poverty that festers in our civilization. 

In a rude state ot society there are seasons of want, 
seasons when people starve; but they are seasons 
when the earth has refused to yield her increase, 
when the rain has not fallen from the heavens, or 
when the land has been swept by some foe — not when 
there is plenty; and yet the peculiar characteristic of 
this modern poverty of ours is, that it is deepest 
where wealth most abounds. 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY ii 

Why, to-day, while over the civilized world there is 
so much distress, so much want ; what is the cry that 
goes up ? What is the current explanation of the hard 
times ? Over-production ! There are so many clothes 
that men must go ragged ; so much coal that in the 
bitter winters people have to shiver; such over-filled 
graneries that people actually die by starvation ! 
Want due to over-production ! Was a greater absur- 
dity ever uttered ? How can there be over-production 
till all have enough ? It is not over-production ; it is 
unjust distribution. 

Poverty necessary ! Why, think of the enormous 
powers that are latent in the human brain ! Think how 
invention enables us to do with the power of one man, 
what not long ago could not be done by the power of 
a thousand. Think that in England alone the steam 
machinery in operation is said to exert a productive 
force greater than the physical force of the population 
of the world, were they all adults. x\nd yet we have 
only begun to invent and discover. We have not 
yet utilized all that has already been invented and dis- 
covered. And look at the powers of the earth. They 
have hardly been touched. In every direction as we 
look, new resources seem to open. Man's ability to 
produce wealth seems almost infinite — we can set no 
bounds to it. Look at the power that is flowing by 
your city in the current of the Mississipi that might be 
set at work for you. So in every direction energy 



12 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

that we might utilize goes to waste ; resources that 
we might draw upon are untouched. Yet men are 
delving and straining to satisfy mere animal wants ; 
women are working, working, working their lives 
away, and too frequently turning in despair from that 
hard struggle to cast away all that makes the charm of 
woman. 

If the animals can reason, what must they think of 
us? Look at one of those great ocean steamers 
ploughing her way across the Atlantic, against wind, 
against wave, absolutely setting at defiance the ut- 
most power of the elements. If the gulls that hover 
over her were thinking beings could they imagine 
that the animal that could create such a structure as 
that could actually want for enough to eat? Yet, so 
it is. How many even of those of us who find life 
easiest are there who really live a rational life? Think 
of it, you who believe that there is only one life for 
man — what a fool at the very best is a man to pass his 
life in this struggle to merely live? And you who be- 
lieve, as I believe, that this is not the last of man, 
that this is a life that opens but another life, think 
how nine-tenths, ay, I do not know but ninety-nine- 
hundredths, of all our vital powers are spent in a mere 
effort to get a living ; or to heap together that which 
we cannot by any possibility take away. Take the 
life of the average working man. Is that the life for 
which the human brain was intended and the human 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 13 

heart was made? Look at the factories scattered 
through our country. They are little better than pen- 
itentiaries. 

I read in the New York papers a while ago that the 
girls at the Yonkers' factories had struck. The papers 
said that the girls did not seem to know why they had 
struck, and intimated that it must be just for the fun 
of striking. Then came out the girls' side of the 
story, and it appeared that they had struck against 
the rules in force. They were fined if they spoke to 
one another, and they were fined still more heavily if 
they laughed. There was a heavy fine for being a 
minute late. I visited a lady in Philadelphia who had 
been a forewoman in various factories, and I asked 
her, ''Is it possible that such rules are enforced?" 
She said it was so in Philadelphia. There is a fine 
for speaking to your next neighbor, a fine for laugh- 
ing ; and she told me that the girls in one place where 
she was employed were fined ten cents a minute for 
being late, though many of them had to come for 
miles in winter storms. She told me of one poor 
girl who really worked hard one week and made 
^3.50; but the fines against her were $5.25. That 
seems ridiculous ; it is ridiculous, but it is pathetic, 
and it is shameful. 

But take the cases of those even who are compara- 
tively independent and well off. Here is a man work- 
ing hour after hour, day after day, week after week, 



14 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

in doing one thing over and over again, and for what? 
Just to live. He is working ten hours a day in order that 
he may sleep eight, and may have two or three hours 
for himself when he is tired out and all his faculties 
are exhausted. That is not a reasonable life ; that is 
not a life for a being possessed of the powers that are 
in man, and I think every man must have felt it for 
himself. I know that when I first went to my trade I 
thought to myself that it was incredible that a man 
was created to work all day long just to live. I used 
to read the Scientific American, and as invention after 
invention was heralded in that paper, I used to think 
to myself that when I became a man it would not be 
necessary to work so hard. But, on the contrary, 
the struggle for existence has become more and more 
intense. People who want to prove the contrary get 
up masses of statistics to show that the condition of 
the working classes is improving. Improvement 
that you have to take a statistical microscope to dis- 
cover does not amount to anything. But there is not 
improvement. 

Improvement ! Why, according to the last report 
of the Michigan Bureau of Labor Statistics, as I read 
yesterday in a Detroit paper, taking all the trades, 
including some of the very high priced ones, where 
the wages are from ^6 to $7 a day, the average earn- 
ings amount to $i.'j'j, and taking out waste time, to 
$1.40. Now when you consider how a man can live 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 15 

and bring up a family on $1.40 a day, even in Michi- 
gan, I do not think you will conclude that the con- 
dition of the working classes can have very much 
improved. 

Here is a broad general fact that is asserted by all 
who have investigated the question, by such men as 
Hallam, the historian, and Professor Thorold Rogers, 
who has made a study of the history of prices as they 
were five centuries ago. When all the productive 
arts were in the most primitive state, when the most 
prolific of our modern vegetables had not been intro- 
duced, when the breeds of cattle were small and poor, 
when there were hardly any roads, and transportation 
was exceedingly difficult, when all manufacturing was 
done by hand — in that rude time the condition of the 
laborers of England was far better than it is to-day. 
In those rude times no man need fear want save when 
actual famine came, and owing to the difficulties of 
transportation the plenty of one district could not 
relieve the scarcity of another. Save in such times 
no man need fear want. Pauperism, such as exists in 
modern times, was absolutely unknown. Every one, 
save the physically disabled, could make a living, and 
the poorest lived in rude plenty. But, perhaps, the 
most astonishing fact brought to light by this investi- 
gation is that at that time, under those conditions, in 
those ''dark ages," as we call them, the working day 
was only eight hours. While, with all our modern 



i6 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

inventions and improvements, our working classes 
have been agitating and struggling in vain to get the 
working day reduced to eight hours. 

Do these facts show improvement ? Why, in the 
rudest state of society, in the most primitive state of ^ 
the arts, the labor of the natural bread-winner will 
suffice to provide a living for himself and for those 
who are dependent upon him. Amid all our inven- 
tions there are large bodies of men who cannot do 
this. What is the most astonishing thing in our civ- 
ilization ? Why, the most astonishing thing to those 
Sioux chiefs who were recently brought from the Far 
West and taken through our manufacturing cities in 
the East, was not the marvelous inventions that en- 
abled machinery to act almost as if it had intellect; 
it was not the growth of our cities; it was not the 
speed with which the railway car whirled along ; it 
was not the telegraph or the telephone that most 
astonished them, but the fact that amid this marvel- 
ous development of productive power, they found 
little children at work. And astonishing that ought 
to be to us ; a most astounding thing ! 

Talk about improvement in the condition of the 
working classes, when the facts are that a larger and 
larger proportion of women and children are forced 
to toil. Why, I am told that, even here in your own 
city, there are children of thirteen and fourteemwork- 
ing in factories. In Detroit, according to the report 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 17 

of the Michigan Bureau of Labor Statistics, one-half 
of the children of school age do not go to school. In 
New Jersey, the report made to the legislature dis- 
closes an amount of misery and ignorance that is ap- 
palling. Children are growing up there, compelled 
to monotonous toil when they ought to be at play ; 
children who do not know how to play ; children who 
have been so long accustomed to work that they 
have become used to it; children growing up in 
such ignorance that they do not know what coun- 
try New Jersey is in, that they never heard of 
George Washington, that some of them think 
Europe is in New York. Such facts are appalling ; 
they mean that the very foundations of the republic 
are being sapped. The dangerous man is not the 
man who tries to excite discontent; the dangerous 
man is the man who says that all is as it ought to be. 
Such a state of things cannot continue; such tenden- 
cies as we see at work here cannot go on without 
bringing at last an overwhelming crash. 

I say that all this poverty and the ignorance that 
flows from it is unnecessary ; I say that there is no 
natural reason why we should not all be rich, in the 
sense, not of having more than each other, but in the 
sense of all having enough to completely satisfy all 
physical wants ; of all having enough to get such an 
easy living that we could develop the better part of 
humanity. There is no reason why wealth should 



i8 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

not be so abundant, that no one should think of such 
a thing as little children at work, or a woman com- 
pelled to a toil that nature never intended her to per- 
form; wealth so abundant that there would be no 
cause for that harassing fear that sometimes paralyzes 
even those who re not considered ''the poor, " the 
fear that every man of us has probably felt, that if 
sickness should smite him, or if he should be taken 
away, those whom he loves better than his life would 
become charges upon charity. "Consider the lilies 
of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither do 
do they spin." I believe that in a really Christian 
community, in a society that honored not with the 
lips but with the act, the doctrines of Jesus, no one 
would have occasion to worry about physical needs 
any more than do the lilies of the field. There is 
enough and to spare. The trouble is that, in this 
mad struggle, we trample in the mire what has been 
provided in sufficiency for us all; trample it in the 
mire while we tear and rend each other. 

There is a cause for this poverty ; and if you trace 
it down, you will find its root in a primary injustice. 
Look over the world to-day — poverty everywhere. 
The cause must be a common one. You cannot 
attribute it to the tariff, or to the form of government, 
or to this thing or to that in which nations differ; be- 
cause, as deep poverty is common to them all, the 
cause that produces it must be a common cause. 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 19 

What is that common cause ? There is one sufficient 
cause that is common to all nations; and that is, the 
appropriation as the property of some, of that natural 
element on which and from which, all must live. 

Take that fact I have spoken of, that appalling fact 
that, even now, it is harder to live than it was in the 
ages dark and- rude five centuries ago — how do you 
explain it ? There is no difficulty in finding the cause. 
Whoever reads the history of England, or the history 
of any other civilized nation (but I speak of the his- 
tory of England because that is the history with 
which we are best acquainted) will see the reason. 
For century after century a Parliament composed of 
aristocrats and employers passed laws endeavoring to 
reduce wages, but in vain. Men could not be crowd- 
ed down to wages that gave a mere living because the 
bounty of nature was not wholly shut up from them ; 
because some remains bi the recognition of the truth 
that all men have equal rights on the earth still exist- 
ed ; because the land of that country, that which was 
held in private possession, was only held on a tenure 
derived from the nation, and for a rent payable back 
to the nation. The church lands supported the 
expenses of public worship, of the maintenance of 
seminaries, and the care of the poor; the crown lands 
defrayed the expenses of the civil list; and from a 
third portion of the lands, those held under military 
tenures, the army was provided for. There was no 



20 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

national debt in England at that time. They carried 
on wars for hundreds of years, but at the charge of 
the landowners. And, more important still, there 
remained everywhere, and you can see in every old 
English town their traces to this day, the common 
lands to which any of the neighborhood was free. 
It was as those lands were enclosed; it was as 
the commons were gradually monopolized, as the 
church lands were made the prey of greedy courtiers, 
as the crown lands were given away as absolute prop- 
erty to the favorites of the king, as the military ten- 
ants shirked their rents, and laid the expenses they 
had agreed to defray upon the nation in taxation, that 
bore upon industry and upon thrift — it was then that 
poverty began to deepen, and the tramp appeared in 
England, just as to-day he is appearing in our new 
States. 

Now, think of it — is not land monopolization a suf- 
ficient reason for poverty ? What is man ? In the 
first place, he is an animal, a land animal, who can- 
not live without land. All that man produces comes 
from land, all productive labor in the final analysis 
consists in working up land; or materials are drawn 
from land into such forms as fit them for the satisfac- 
tion of human wants and desires. Why, man's very 
body is drawn from the land. Children^ of the soil, 
we come from the land, and to the land we must re- 
turn. Take away from man all that belongs to the 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 2i 

land, and what have you but a disembodied spirit ? 
Therefore, he who holds the land on which and from 
which another man, must live, is that man's master; 
and the man is his slave. The man who holds the 
land on which I must live can command me to life or 
to death just as absolutely as though I were his chat- 
tel. Talk about abolishing slavery — we have not 
abolished slavery — we have only abolished one rude 
form of it, chattel slavery. There is a deeper and 
more insidious form, a more cursed form yet before 
us to abolish, in this industrial slavery that makes a 
man a virtual slave, while taunting him and mocking 
him with the name of freedom. Poverty ! want ! they 
will sting as much as the lash. Slavery ! God knows 
there are horrors enough in slavery; but there are 
deeper horrors in our civilized society to-day. Bad 
as chattel slavery was, it did not drive slave mothers 
to kill their children, yet you may read in official 
reports that the system of child insurance, which has 
taken root so strongly in England, and which is now 
spreading over our Eastern States, has perceptibly 
and largely increased the rate of child mortality ! — 
What does that mean ? 

Robinson Crusoe, as you know, when he rescued 
Friday from the cannibals, made him his slave. 
Friday had to serve Crusoe. But, supposing Crusoe 
had said, ''Oh, man and brother, I am very glad to 
see you, and I welcome you to this island, and you 



22 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

shall be a free and independent citizen, with just as 
much to say as I have — except that this island is mine 
— and, of course, as I can do as I please with my own 
property, you must not use it save upon my terms," 
Friday would have been just as much Crusoe's slave 
as though he had called him one. Friday was not a 
fish, he could not swim off through the sea; he was 
not a bird and could not fly off through the air; if he 
lived at all, he had to live on that island. And if that 
island was Crusoe's, Crusoe was his master through 
life to death. 

A friend of mine, who believes as I do upon this 
question, was talking a while ago with another friend 
of mine who is a greenbacker, but who had not paid 
much attention to the land question. Our green- 
backer friend said, ''Yes, yes, the land question is 
an important question ; oh, I admit that the land 
question is a very important question ; but then there 
are other important questions. There is this ques- 
tion, and that question, and the other question ; and 
there is the money question. The money question is 
a very important question ; it is a more important 
question than the land question. You give me all the 
money, and you can take all the land." My friend 
said, ''Well, suppose you had all the money in the 
world and I had all the land in the world, what would 
you do if I were to give you notice to quit?" 

Do you know that I do not think the average man 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 23 

realizes what land is ! I know a little girl who has 
been going to school for some time, studying geogra- 
phy, and all that sort of thing; and one day she said 
tome: '* Here is something about the surface of the 
earth. I wonder what the surface of the earth looks 
like?" ''Well," I said, "look out into the yard 
there. That is the surface of the earth." She said, 
''That the surface of the earth? Our yard the sur- 
face of the earth? Why, I never thought of it!" 
That is very much the case not only with grown men, 
but with such wise beings as newspaper editors. 
They seem to think, when you talk of land, that you 
always refer to farms ; to think that the land question 
is a question that relates entirely to farmers, as though 
land had no other use than growing crops. Now, I 
should like to know how a man could even edit a 
newspaper without having the use of some land. He 
might swing himself by straps and go up in a balloon, 
but he could not even then get along without land. 
What supports the balloon in the air? Land; the 
surface of the earth. Let the earth drop, and what 
would become of the balloon ? The air that supports 
the balloon is supported in turn by land. So it is 
with everything else men can do. Whether a man is 
working away three thousand feet under the surface 
of the earth, or whether he is working up in the top 
of one of those immense buildings they have in New 



24 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

York, whether he is ploughing the soil or sailing 
across the ocean, he is still using land. 

Land! Why, in owning a piece of ground, what 
do you own ? The lawyers will tell you that you own 
from the center of the earth right up to heaven ; and, 
so far as all human purposes go, you do. In New 
York they are building houses thirteen and fourteen 
stories high. What are men, living in those upper 
stories, paying for ? There is a friend of mine who 
has an office in one of them, and he estimates 
that he pays by the cubic foot for air. Well, the man 
who owns the surface of the land has the renting of 
the air up there, and would have if the buildings were 
carried up for miles. 

This land question is the bottom question. Man is 
a land animal. Suppose you want to build a house ; 
can you build it without a place to put it ? What is 
it built of ? Stone, or mortar, or wood, or iron — they 
all come from the earth. Think of any article of 
wealth you choose, any of those things which men 
struggle for, where do they come from ? From the 
land. It is the bottom question. 

The land question is simply the labor question ; and 
when some men own that element from which all 
wealth must be drawn, and upon which all must live, 
then they have the power of living without work, and, 
therefore, those who do. work get less of the products 
of work. 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 25 

Did you ever think of the utter absurdity and 
strangeness of the fact that, all over the civilized 
world, the working classes are the poor classes ? Go 
into any city in the world, and get into a cab, and 
ask the man to drive you to where the working people 
live ; he won't take you to where the fine houses are ; 
he will take you, on the contrary, into the squalid 
quarters, the poorer quarters. Did you ever think 
how curious that is ? Think for a moment how it 
would strike a rational being who had never been on 
the earth before, if such an intelligence could come 
down, and you were to explain to him how we live on 
earth, how houses, and food and clothing, and all the 
many things we need, are all produced by work, 
would he not think that the working people would be 
the people who lived in the finest houses and had 
most of everything that work produces ? Yet, whether 
you took him to London or Paris, or New York, or 
even to Burlington, he would find that those called 
working people were the people who lived in the 
poorest houses. 

All this is strange — just think of it. We naturally 
despise poverty ; and it is reasonable that we should. 
I do not say — I distinctly repudiate it — that the peo- 
ple who are poor are poor always from their own 
fault, or even in most cases ; but it ought to be so. 
If any good man or woman had the power to create a 
world, it would be a sort of a world in which no one 



26 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

would be poor unless he was lazy or vicious. But 
that is just precisely the kind of a world that this is ; 
that is just precisely the kind of a world that the 
Creator has made. Nature gives to labor, and to labor 
alone; there must be human work before any article 
of wealth can be produced ; and, in a natural state of 
things, the man who toiled honestly and well would 
be the rich man, and he who did not work would be 
poor. We have so reversed the order of nature, 
that we are accustomed to think of a working-man as 
a poor man. 

And if you trace it out I believe you will see that 
the primary cause of this is that we compel those who 
work to pay others for permission to do so. You buy 
a coat, a horse, a house; there you are paying the 
seller for labor exerted, for something that he has 
produced, or that he has got from the man who did 
produce it ; but when you pay a man for land, what 
are you paying him for ? You pay him for something 
that no man produced; you pay him for something 
that was here before man was, or for a value that was 
created, not by him individually, but by the commun- 
ity of which you are a part. What is the reason that 
the land here, where we stand to-night, is worth more 
than it was twenty-five years ago ? What is the rea- 
son that land in the center of New York, that once 
could be bought by the mile for a jug of whisky, is 
,now w^orth so much that, though you were to cover it 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 27 

with gold, you would not have its value? Is it not 
because of the increase of population ? Take away 
that population, and where would the value of the 
land be ? Look at it in any way you please. 

We talk about over-production. How can there be 
such a thing as over-production while people want ? 
All these things that are said to be over-produced are 
desired by many people. Why do they not get them? 
They do not get them because they have not the 
means to buy them ; not that they do not want them. 
Why have they not the means to buy them ? They 
earn too little. When great masses of men have to 
work for an average of $1.40 a day, it is no wonder 
that great quantities of goods cannot be sold. 

Now, why is it that men have to work for such low 
wages ? Because, if they were to demand higher 
wages, there are plenty of unemployed men ready to 
step into their places. It is this mass of unemployed 
men who compel that fierce competition that drives 
wages down to the point of bare subsistence. Wliy 
is it that there are men who cannot get employment ? 
Did you ever think what a strange thing it is that 
men cannot find employment ? Adam had no difficulty 
in finding employment ; neither had Robinson Crusoe; 
the finding of employment was the last thing that 
troubled them. 

If men cannot find an employer, why can they not 
employ themselves? Simply because they are shut 



28 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

out from the element on which human labor can alone 
be exerted ; men are compelled to compete with each 
other for the wages of an employer, because they have 
been robbed of the natural opportunities of employ- 
ing themselves ; because they cannot find a piece of 
God's world on which to work without paying some 
other human creature for the privilege. 

I do not mean to say that, even after you had set 
right this fundamental injustice, there would not be 
many things to do ; but this I do mean to say, that 
our treatment of land lies at the bottom of all social 
questions. This I do mean to say, that, do what you 
please, reform as you may, you never can get rid of 
widespread poverty so long as the element on which, 
and from which, all men must live is made the private 
property of some men. It is utterly impossible. Re- 
form government — get taxes down to the minimum — 
build railways; institute co-operative stores; divide 
profits, if you choose, between employers and em- 
ployed — and what will be the result ? The result will 
be that land will increase in value — that will be the 
result — that and nothing else. Experience shows 
this. Do not all improvements simply increase the 
value of land^the price that some must pay others 
for the privilege of living ? 

Consider the matter. I say it with all reverence, 
and merely say it because I wish to impress a truth 
upon your minds — it is utterly impossible, so long as 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 29 

His laws are what they are, that God Himself could 
relieve poverty — utterly impossible. Think of it, and 
you will see. Men, pray to the Almighty to relieve 
poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws — 
it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that ; it comes 
from man's injustice to his fellows. Supposing the 
Almighty were to hear the prayer, how could He 
carry out the request, so long as His laws are what 
they are? Consider — the Almighty gives us nothing 
of the things that constitute wealth ; He merely gives 
us the raw material, which must be utilized by man 
to produce w^ealth. Does He not give us enough of 
that now? How could He relieve poverty even if He 
were to give us more? Supposing, in answer to these 
prayers, He were to increase the power of the sun, or 
the virtues of the soil? Supposing He were to make 
plants more prolific, or animals to produce after their 
kind more abundantly ? Who would get the benefit 
of it? Take a country where land is completely 
monopolized, as it is in most of the civilized countries 
— who would get the benefit of it? Simply the land- 
owners. And even if God, in answer to prayer, were 
to send down out of the heavens those things that 
men require, who would get the benefit ? 

In the Old Testament we are told that, when the 
Israelites journeyed through the desert, they were 
hungered, and that God sent down out of the heavens 
— manna. There was enough for all of them, and 



30 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

they all took it and were relieved. But, supposing that 
desert had been held as private property, as the soil 
of Great Britain is held; as the soil even of our new 
States is being held. Supposing that one of the 
Israelites had a square mile, and another one had 
twenty square miles, and another one had a hundred 
square miles, and the great majority of the Israelites 
did not have enough to set the soles of their feet 
upon, which they could call their own — what would 
become of the manna ? What good would it have 
done to the majority? Not a whit. Though God had 
sent down manna enough for all, that manna would 
have been the property of the landholders ; they 
would have employed some of the others, perhaps, 
to gather it up in heaps for them, and would 
have sold it to the hungry brethren. Consider it: 
this purchase and sale of manna might have gone on 
until the majority of the Israelites had given up all 
they had, even to the clothes off their backs. What 
then? Well, then they would not have had anything 
left with which to buy manna, and the consequence 
would have been that while they went hungry the 
manna would be lying in great heaps, and the land- 
owners would be complaining about the over-produc- 
tion of manna. There would have been a great 
harvest of manna and hungry people, just precisely 
the phenomenon that we see to-day. 
.1 cannot go over all the points I would like to; but 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 31 

I wish tQ call your attention to the utter absurdity of 
private property in land! Why, consider it — the id(?a 
of a man selling tl^e earth — the earth, our common 
mother. A man selling that which no man produced. 
A man passing title from one generation to another. 
Why, it is the most absurd thing in the world. Did 
you ever think of this? What right has a dead man 
to land ? For whom was this earth created ? It was 
created for the living, certainly not for the dead. 
Well, now, we treat it as though it was created for 
the dead. Where do our land titles come from ? 
They come from men who, for the most part, have 
passed and gone. Here, in this new country,, you 
get a little nearer the original source; but go to the 
Eastern States, and go over the Atlantic. There you 
may clearly see the power that comes from land- 
ownership. 

As I say, the man that owns the land is the master 
of those who must live on it. Here is a modern in- 
stance : you who are familiar with the history of the 
Scottish Church know that in the forties there was a 
disruption in the church. You who have read Hugh 
Miller's work on The Crnise of the Betsey "knov^ some- 
thing about it ; how a great body, led by Dr. 
Chalmers, came out from the Established Church and 
said they would set up a Free Church. In the Estab- 
lished Church were a great many of the landowners. 
Some of them, like the Duke of Buccleuch, owning 



32 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

miles and miles of land on which no common Scots- 
man had a right to put his foot save by the Duke of 
Buccleuch's permission. These landowners refused 
not only to allow these Free Churchmen to have 
ground upon which to erect a church, but they would 
not let them stand on their land and worship God. 
You who have read The Cruise of the Betsey know 
that it is the story of a clergyman who was obliged to 
make his home in a boat on the wild sea, because he 
was not allowed to have land enough to live on. In 
many places the people had to take the Sacrament 
with the tide coming to their knees — many a man 
lost his life worshipping on the roads, in the rain and 
snow. They were not permitted to go on Mr. Land- 
lords land and worship God, and had to take to the 
roads. The Duke of Buccleuch stood out for seven 
years, compelling people to worship on the roads, 
until finally, relenting a little, he allowed them to do 
so in a gravel pit ; whereupon they passed a resolu- 
tion of thanks to his Grace. 

But that is not what I wanted to tell you. The 
thing that struck me was this significant fact : as soon 
as the disruption occurred the Free Church, com- 
posed of a great many able men, at once sent a 
deputation to the landlords to ask permission for 
Scotsmen to worship God in Scotland and in their 
own way. This deputation set out for London — 
they had to go to London, England, to get permission 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 33 

for Scotsmen to worship God in Scotland and in their 
own native home ! 

But that is not the most absurd thing. In one 
place, when they were refused land upon which to 
stand and worship God, the late landowner had died 
and his estate was in the hands of the trustees, and 
the answer of the trustees was that, so far as they 
were concerned, they would exceedingly like to allow 
them to have a place to put up a church to worship, 
but they could not conscientiously do it, because they 
knew that such a course would be very displeasing to 
the late Mr. Monaltie ! Now, this dead man had 
gone to heaven, let us hope ; at any rate he had gone 
away from this world, but, lest it might displease him, 
men yet living could not worship God. Is it possible 
for absurdity to go any further ? 

You may say that those Scottish people are a very 
absurd people, but they are not a whit more so than 
we are: I read only a little while ago of some Long 
Island fishermen who had been paying as rent for the 
privilege of fishing there, a certain part of the catch. 
They paid it because they believed that James II., a 
dead man centuries ago, a man who never put his 
foot in America, a king who was kicked off the Eng- 
lish throne, had said they had to pay it, and they got 
up a committee, went to the county town and searched 
the records. They could not find anything in the 
records to show that James II. had ever ordered that 



34 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

they should give any of their fish to anybody, and 
so they refused to pay any longer. But if they had 
found that James 11. had really said they should, they 
would have gone on paying. Can anything be more 
absurd ? 

There is a square in New York — Stuyvesant Square 
— it is locked up at six o'clock every evening, even 
on long summer evenings. Why is it locked up ? 
Why are the children not allowed to play there ? 
Why, because old Mr. Stuyvesant, dead and gone I 
don't know how many years ago, so willed it. Now, 
can anything be more absurd ? 

Yet, that is not any more absurd than our land 
titles. From whom do they come ? Dead man after 
dead man. Suppose you get on the cars here going 
to Council Bluffs or Chicago. You find a passenger 
with his baggage strewn over the seats. You say, 
'^ Will you give me a seat, if you please, sir?" He 
replies, '^No; I bought this seat." ''Bought this 
seat? From whom did you buy it?" ''I bought it 
from the man who got out at the last station." That 
is the way we manage this earth of ours. 

Is it not a self-evident truth, as Thomas Jefferson 
said, that ''the land belongs in usufruct to the living," 
and that they who have died have left it, and have no 
power to say how it shall be disposed of ? Title to 
land ! Where can a man get any title which makes 
the earth his property ? 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 35 

There is a sacred right to property — sacred because 
ordained by the laws of nature, that is to say, by the 
law of God, ar|.d necessary to social order and civili- 
zation. That is the right of property in things pro- 
duced by labor; it rests on the right of a man to him- 
self. That which a man produces, that is his against 
all the world, to give or to keep, to lend, to sell or to 
bequeath; but how can he get such a right to land 
when it was here before he came? Individual claims 
to land rest only on appropriation. I read in a recent 
number of the Nineteenth Century^ possibly some of 
you have read it, an article by an ex- Prime Minister 
of Australia, in which there was a little story that 
attracted my attention. It was of a man named Gala- 
hard, who, in the early days, got up to the top of a 
high hill in one of the finest parts of Western Austra- 
lia. He got up there, looked all round, and made 
his proclamation : ''All the land that is in sight from 
the top of this hill I claim for myself: and all the 
land that is out of sight I claim for my son John. 

That story is of universal application. Land titles 
everywhere come from just such appropriation. 
Now, under certain circumstances, appropriation can 
give a right. You invite a company of gentlemen to 
dinner, and you say to them, ''Be seated, gentlemen," 
and I get into this chair. Well, that seat, for the 
time being, is mine by the right of appropriation. It 
would be very ungentlemanly, it would be very wrong, 



36 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

for any of the other guests to come up and say, "Get 
out of that chair, I want to sit there 1" But that 
right of possession, which is good so far as the chair 
is concerned for the time, does not give me a right to 
appropriate all there is on the table before me. 
Grant that a man has a right to appropriate such 
natural elements as he can use, has he any right to 
appropriate more than he can use ? Has a guest, in 
such a case as I have supposed, a right to appropriate 
more than he needs, and make other people stand up ? 
That is what is done. 

Why, look all over this country — look at this town 
or any other town. If men took only what they want- 
ed to use we should all have enough ; but they take 
what they do not want to use at all. Here are a lot 
of Englishmen coming over here and getting titles to 
our land in vast tracts ; what do they want with our 
land ? They do not want it at all ; it is not the land 
they want; they have no use for American land. 
What they want is the income that they know they 
can in a little while get from it. Where does that in- 
come come from? It comes from labor, from the 
labor of American citizens. What we are selling to 
these people is our children, not land. 

Poverty? Can there be any doubt of its cause? 
Go into the old countries — go into western Ireland, 
into the Highlands of Scotland ; there are purely prim- 
itive communities. There you will find people as poor 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 37 

as poor can be — living year after year on oatmeal or on 
potatoes, and often going hungry. I could tell you 
^ many a pathetic story. Speaking to a Scottish physi- 
cian who was telling me how this diet was inducing 
among these people a disease similar to that which 
from the same cause is ravaging Italy (the Pellagra), 
I said to him: "There is plenty of fish; why don't 
they catch fish ? There is plenty of game. I know 
the laws are against it, but cannot they take it on the 
sly?" ''That," he said, ''never enters their heads. 
Why, if a man was even suspected of having a taste 
for trout or grouse he would have to leave at once." 
There is no difficulty in discovering what makes those 
people poor. They have no right to anything that 
nature gives them. All they can make above a living 
they must pay to the landlord. They not only have 
to pay for the land that they use, but they have to pay 
for the seaweed that comes ashore and for the turf 
they dig from the bogs. They dare not improve, for 
any improvements they make are made an excuse for 
putting up the rent. These people who work hard, 
live in hovels, and the landlords, who do not work at 
all — oh! they live in luxury in London or Paris. If they 
have hunting boxes there, why, they are magnificent 
castles as compared with the hovels in which the men 
live who do the work. Is there any question as to the 
cause of the poverty there ? 

Now, go into the cities, and what do you see? 



38 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

Why, you see even a lower depth of poverty; ay, if I 
would point out the worst evils of land monopoly I 
would not take you to Connemara ; I would not take 
you to Skye or Kintyre — I would take you to Dublin, 
or Glasgow or London. There is something worse 
than physical deprivation, something v^^orse than 
starvation ; and that is the degradation of the mind, 
the death of the soul. That is what you will find in 
those cities. 

Now, what is the cause of that ? Why, it is plainly 
to be seen; the people driven off the land in the 
country are driven into the slums of the cities. For 
every man that is driven off the land, the demand for 
the produce of the workmen of the cities is lessened ; 
and the man himself, with his wife and children, is 
forced among those workmen to compete upon any 
terms for a bare living and force wages down. Get 
work he must or starve — get work he must, or do that 
which those people, so long as they maintain their 
manly feelings, dread more than death, go to the 
almshouse. That is the reason, here as in Great 
Britain, that the cities are overcrowded. Open the 
land that is locked up, that is held by dogs-in-the- 
manger, who will not use it themselves and will not 
allow anybody else to use it, and you would see no 
more of tramps and hear no more of over-production. 

The utter absurdity of this thing of private property 
in land ! I defy anyone to show me any good from it, 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 39 

look where you please. Go out to the new lands, 
where my attention was first called to it, or go to the 
heart of the capital of the world — London. Every- 
where, when your eyes are once opened, you will see 
its inequality and you will see its absurdity. You do 
not have to go farther than Burlington. You have 
here a most beautiful site for a city, but the city itself, 
as compared with what it might be, is a miserable, 
straggling town. A gentleman showed me to-day a 
big hole alongside one of your streets. The place 
has been filled up all around it, and this hole is left. 
It is neither pretty nor useful. Why does that hole 
stay there? Well, it stays there because somebody 
claims it as his private property. There is a man, 
this gentleman told me, who wished to grade another 
lot, and wanted somewhere to put the dirt he took off 
it, and he offered to buy this hole so that he might fill 
it up. Nov/, it would have been a good thing for 
Burlington to have it filled up, a good thing for you 
all — your town would look better, and you yourselves 
would be in no danger of tumbling into it some dark 
night. Why, my friend pointed out to me another 
similar hole in which water had collected, and told me 
that two children had been drowned there. And he 
likewise told me that a drunken man some years ago 
bad fallen into such a hole, and had brought a suit 
against the city which cost you taxpayers some 
$11,000. Clearly it is to the interests of you all to 



40 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

have that particular hole I am talking of filled up. The 
man who wanted to fill it up offered the hole-owner 
^300. But the hole-owner refused the offer, and 
declares he will hold out until he can get $1,000; and, 
in the meanwhile, that unsightly and dangerous hole 
must remain. That is but an illustration of private 
property in land. 

You may see the same thing all over this country. 
See how injuriously in the agricultural districts this 
thing of private property in land affects the roads and 
the distances between the people. A man does not 
take what land he wants, what he can use; but he 
takes all he can get, and the consequence is that his 
next neighbor has to go further along, people are 
separated from each other further than than they 
ought to be, to the increased difficulty of production, 
to ths loss of neighborhood and companionship. 
They have more roads to maintain than they can 
decently maintain ; they must do more work to get 
the same result, and life is in every way harder and 
drearier. 

When you come to 'the cities, it is just the other 
way. In the country the people are too much 
scattered; in the great cities they are too crowded. 
Go to a city like New York, and there they are 
jammed together like sardines in a box, living family 
upon family, one above the other. It is an utterly 
unnatural and unwholesome life. How can you have 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 41 

anything like a home in a tenement of two or three 
rooms ? How can children be brought up healthily 
with no place to play ? Two or three weeks ago I 
read of a New'York judge who fined two little boys 
five dollars for playing hop-scotch on the street — 
where else could they play? Private property in land 
had robbed them of all place to play. Even a tem- 
perance man, who had investigated the subject, said 
that in his opinion the gin palaces of London were a 
positive good in this, that they enabled the people 
whose abodes were dark and squalid rooms to see a 
little brightness, and thus prevent them from going 
wholly mad. 

What is the reason for this overcrowding of cities ? 
There is no natural reason. Take New York, one- 
half of its area is not built upon. Why, then, must 
people crowd together as they do there ? Simply 
because of private ownership of land. There is 
plenty of room to build houses, and plenty of people 
who want to build houses, but before anybody can 
build a house a blackmail price must be paid to 
some dog-in-the-manger. It costs, in many cases, 
more to get vacant ground upon which to build a 
house than it does to build the house. And then 
what happens to the man who pays this blackmail and 
builds a house? Down comes the tax-gatherer and 
fines him for. building the house. 

It is so all over the United States — the men who 



42 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

improve, the men who turn the prairie into farms, 
and the desert into gardens, the men who beautify 
your cities, are taxed and fined for having done 
these things. Now, nothing is clearer than that 
the people of New York want more houses ; and 
I think that even here in Burlington you could 
get along with more houses. Why, then, should you 
fine a man that builds one? Look all over this 
country — the bulk of the taxation rests upon the im- 
prover ; the man who puts up a building or establishes 
a factory, or cultivates a farm, he is taxed for it; and 
not merely taxed for it, but I think, in nine cases out 
of ten, the land which he uses, the bare land, is taxed 
more than the adjoining lot, or the adjoining i6o 
acres that some speculator is holding as a mere dog- 
in-the-manger, not using it himself, and not allowing 
anybody else to use it. 

I am talking too long ; but let me, in a few words, 
point out the way of getting rid of land monopoly, 
securing the right of all to the elements which are 
necessary for life. We could not divide the land. In 
a rude state of society, as among the ancient Hebrews, 
giving each family its lot, and making it inalienable, 
we might secure something like equality. But in a 
complex civilization that will not suffice. It is not, 
however, necessary to divide up the land. All that is 
necessary is to divide up the income that comes from 
the land. In that way we can secure absolute equal- 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 43 

ity; nor could the adoption of this principle involve 
any rude shock or violent change. It can be brought 
about gradually and easily by abolishing the taxes 
that now rest upon capital, labor, and improvements, 
and raising all our public revenues by the taxation of 
land values ; and the longer you think of it the clearer 
you will see that in every possible way it will be a 
benefit. 

Now, supposing we should abolish all other taxes, 
direct and indirect, substituting for them a tax upon 
land values, what would be the effect? In the first 
place, it would be to kill speculative values. It would 
be to remove from the newer parts of the country the 
bulk of the taxation, and put it on the richer parts. 
It would be to exempt the pioneer from taxation, and 
make the larger cities pay more of it. It would be to 
relieve energy and enterprise, capital and labor, from 
all those burdens that now bear upon them. What a 
start that would give to production ! In the second 
place, we could, from the value of land, not merely 
pay all the present expenses of government, but we 
could do infinitely more. In the city of San Francis- 
co, James Lick left a few blocks of ground to be used 
for public purposes there, and the rent amounts to so 
much, that out of it will be built the largest telescope 
in the world, large public baths, and other public 
buildings, and various costly monuments. If, instead 
of these few blocks, the whole value of the land upon 



44 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

which the city is built had accrued to San Francisco, 
what could she not do ? 

So in this little town, where land values are very 
low as compared with such cities as Chicago and San 
Francisco, you could do many things for mutual ben- 
efit and public improvement did you appropriate to 
public purposes the land values that now go to indi- 
viduals. You could have a great free library ; you 
could have an art gallery ; you could get yourselves a 
public park, a magnificent public park too. You have 
here one of the finest natural sites for a beautiful town 
that I know of, and I have traveled much. You 
might make on this site a city that it would be a 
pleasure to live in. You will not, as you go now — oh! 
no ! Why, the very fact that you have a magnificent 
view here will cause somebody to hold on all the more 
tightly to the land that commands this view, and 
charge higher prices for it. The State of New York 
wants to buy a strip of land so as to enable the people 
to see the Niagara, but what a price she must pay for 
it. Look at all the great cities ; in Philadelphia, for 
instance, in order to build their great city hall they 
had to block up the only two wide streets they had in 
the city. Everywhere you go you may see how private 
property in land prevents public as well as private 
improvement. 

But I have no time to enter further into details. I 
can only ask you to think upon this thing, and the 



THE CRIME OF POVERTY 45 

more you will see its desirability. As an English 
friend of mine puts it, "No taxes and a pension for 
everybody ; " and why should it not be ? To take land 
values for public purposes is not really to impose a 
tax, but to take for public purposes a value created by 
the community. And out of the fund which would 
thus accrue from the common property, we might, 
without degradation to anybody, provide enough to 
actually secure from want all who were deprived of 
their natural protectors, or met with accident; or any 
man who should grow so old that he could not work. 
All prating that is heard from some quarters about 
its hurting the common people to give them what they 
do not work for is humbug. The truth is, that any- 
thing that injures self-respect, degrades, does harm ; 
but if you give it as a right, as something to which 
every citizen is entitled, it does not degrade. Charity 
schools do degrade the children that are sent to them, 
but public schools do not. 

But all such benefits as these; while great, would 
be incidental. The great thing would be that the 
reform I propose would tend to open opportunities to 
labor and enable men to provide employment for 
themselves. That is the great advantage. We should 
gain the enormous productive power that is going to 
waste all over the country, the power of idle hands 
that would gladly be at work. And that removed, 
then you would see wages begin to mount. It is not 



46 THE CRIME OF POVERTY 

that everyone would turn farmer, or everyone build 
himself a house if he had an opportunity for doing so, 
but so many could, and would, as to relieve the pres- 
sure on the labor market and provide employment for 
all others. And as wages mounted to the higher levels 
then you would see the productive power increased. 
The country where wages are high is the country of 
greatest productive power. Where wages are highest 
there will invention be most active; there will labor 
be most intelligent ; there will be the greatest yield 
for the expenditure of exertion. The more you think 
of it the more clearly you will see what I say is true. 
I cannot hope to convince you in talking for an hour 
or two, but I shall be content if I shall put you upon 
inquiry. Think for yourselves ; ask yourselves whether 
this widespread fact of poverty is not a crime, and a 
crime for which everyone of us, man and woman, who 
does not do what he or she can do to call attention 
to it and to do away with it, is responsible. 



BOOKS BY HENRY GEORGE 
Set cloth bound, 10 vol. - $12.00 
Set leather bound, 10 vol. 17.00 

See next page for description 




Paper covered books, each 30c, postpaid 

PROGRESS AND POVERTY 
SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE 
A PERPLEXED PHILOSOPPIER 
THE LAND QUESTION 



GEMS FROM GEORGE (15c per copy) 



►J.-'QT.-V*."^ * 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ^^ 




013 476 840 A 






